DEARBORN, Mich. -- When the 2004 Taurus makes its debut in the 2004
Daytona 500, it will represent Ford's most synergistic effort in
race car design to date. This synergy comes from all corners of the
Ford empire and includes solid representation from not only the
NASCAR ranks but also the real world production side.

The prior version of Taurus, originally presented to the public in
the 1998 Daytona 500, has provided excellent results. But its humble
beginnings came after public, and, at times, cantankerous battles
between various team entities that wanted to leave their mark on
that specific iteration.

"A lot of times you can build a car that just suits one team's
purpose," said Ford Racing's NASCAR Field Manager, Robin Pemberton,
on a pitfall of this type of engineering exercise. Pemberton is in a
position to know, as he was one of the principals of a three-team
entity that worked on the '98 Taurus while working at Penske South
Racing.

"I think the last couple times we had Penske doing one version,
Yates doing one and Roush doing one," recalled Pemberton shaking his
head. "During that ('98) project, NASCAR would cut templates off of
cars and they were different cars that were constructed in different
ways and not all the templates fit all the cars at the same time.

"It was almost impossible."

With lessons learned from 1998, Ford Racing's North American
Operations Manager, Greg Specht, knew that he wanted to approach the
car design issue differently. With a heftier engineering staff at
his disposal, all he needed was word that the production staff
wanted a new car developed for the NASCAR circuit.

The call for a new Taurus came approximately 20 months prior to its
first on-track experience and included conversations between Ford
Racing and Ford production. The result is a race car that is
representative of what consumers see on the showroom floor.

"What we have in '04 is a re-freshening of the Taurus, so that kicks
off a process," recalled Specht. "After the decision was made, we
say to the production guys, 'OK, what are your thoughts? Show us
your sketches and drawings,' and so on and so forth.

"With their ideas and goals in place, we went back and started
looking at the race car and say, 'OK, now what do we need to do to
the race car to have it look like the production car?'"

Having the production car designers more intimately involved from
the start is also something new to the process, as the value of the
NASCAR fan base becomes a key factor.

"In the recent past, racing considerations haven't influenced their
(production's) thinking a lot anyway," explained Specht. "Even going
back to the Thunderbird, what they did in the design studio was not
affected that much by what was happening on the race track. However,
it is starting to change in that they're asking for [Ford Racing's]
input a lot earlier on in the process and some ideas that will
actually improve the production car and truck.

"That happened with the new F-150, in fact, because since aero was
such a big thing on the race track, we spent a lot more time in the
wind tunnel with our race trucks than the production engineers do
with the production truck," continued Specht. "So we know a lot more
about balance and downforce and drag and the subtle little things
that you can do to increase those characteristics.

"So, yes, we're getting drawn into the process earlier on and
they're kind of picking our brains and saying, 'What do you think of
this?' or 'How can we improve the rear downforce on the truck?'
That's getting fed back down to the car side of things and they're
saying, 'Gee, the next time we do one of these we'd like to bring
you guys in early on in the process so we can take advantage of what
you know about the aerodynamics and what other sensitive areas of
the car we can work with.'

"Our expertise has come up to a level now where we've got people
that really can go in and make a contribution on the production side
of things," added Specht. "In the past we haven't had the depth in
our aero group that we have today, so I think that's part of the
reason that we're able to provide more input than we have in the
past."

Once the basic design concepts were developed, then the aero process
began. This is the playground of Ford Racing's lead aerodynamicist,
Bernie Marcus, who spent a considerable amount of time working out
the nuances of the new car by using hand sketches and computer
modeling before any consideration was given to forming actual metal
fenders, hoods and decklids.

Marcus didn't have a wide open field in which to draw from because
of NASCAR's "aero-matching" rules, but he closed in on the starting
point for the new car by using electronic models and 40-percent clay
models.

"I think with the responsible aero people at Ford, Brett Andrews and
Bernie Marcus, and with their experience with working on 40-percent
models, the approach was to try to come up with the best car using
the model program," explained Pemberton. "It's probably one of the
first times there's been an effort to use the models to develop
something new instead of just trying to enhance something that's out
there presently. As far as the stock car world goes, it's probably
one of the first times or very few times that a new car has been
done this way."

Once the new Taurus was close to complete in the modeling process, a
facility needed to be found where a full-scale metal car could be
constructed.

"We were contacted by Greg Specht to see if we would build the
submission car," said Wood Brothers co-owner Eddie Wood. "We didn't
really know what was involved, but since it was Greg that asked we
said we would do it. It was as simple as that.

"I've never been involved in one of these before and we didn't know
how the process went," confessed Wood. "It was a much more detailed
process than I ever imagined as far as what NASCAR required. They
designated where to put the nose, the roof and the deck. It wasn't
like you just built it like you wanted it. You've got to build it
like they want it built.

"You don't want to build it and have to build it again. You wanted
people to say this is the way they wanted it as it went along. It's
kind of like building a house. When you get the walls up, come look
at it. When you get the roof up, come look at it. When you get the
plumbing in, come look at it. So it was kind of a stepped process
that went pretty well.

"It was a group effort. Hopefully it yields the results that
everyone wants. I feel good about it."
Specht feels equally good about the final product. "The Wood
Brothers did a marvelous job providing the hands and arms and muscle
to actually do the fabrication and get us to the point where Robin
and Bernie can go and start rubbing on it," he said.

While Ford did spearhead the '04 Taurus project, it was not done in
a vacuum. Team input was solicited and used, but it was not in the
free-for-all format that made the '98 car contentious at times.

"The new car went pretty smoothly," Pemberton admitted after NASCAR
accepted it. "We started with the Wood Brothers because it was
easier to work with a single team. That way we didn't have these big
committee meetings all the time. Big things run very slow, so it was
easy to work with the Wood Brothers.

"We had and took input from the other Cup owners. The Roush group,
they had some interest in it and [they had some] input. The same
with Yates, but it was mainly refereed by Bernie. It was all
channeled through him and that was different than what has been done
in the past. I've been involved with the Ford thing many different
times and it was nice that it came from the manufacturer out instead
of the teams."

Expanding on that thought, Specht said, "In the past we've handed it
over to a team and said, 'Go do this for us,' and we gave them some
ideas and they went and did it. That didn't happen this time. We
were very much taking the lead in this. We involved all the teams,
but we certainly led the process because we had people on board like
Bernie and Robin."

One more item that helped the new Taurus come to life quickly was
the intimate involvement of the sanctioning body -- from start to
finish.

"One other thing I should say is I think the reason everything went
so well is because we also included NASCAR early on and that was
very different from the past," Specht offered. "The previous
programs that I've been involved in, we'd go off in the corner and
do our jobs. The day it was due, we handed it to NASCAR and said,
'OK, here's our car. Can we have your approval for this?'

"We took a very different approach this time around and before we
started fabricating the car and after we went to the teams and had
an idea of what we wanted to do, we brought NASCAR up to Dearborn to
our design studio and they met with our production car designers and
walked NASCAR through, 'Here's the production car. Here's what we're
thinking of doing with the race car to match to the production car.
What do you think?'

"That kicked off the interim process with NASCAR where every step
along the way they knew what we were doing. So there were no
surprises for them and that resulted in no surprises for us
throughout the process."

So, how many people does it take to design a new car for NASCAR
racing? The easy answer is lots and lots. Explaining this aspect of
the project, Specht said, "Within my group alone there were probably
about a half dozen people that were working on the project, not all
full-time. Then we also had suppliers that helped us out like Roush
Industries and their composite shop. We had outside people doing
scans. We had people building scale models for us, so it's a
sizeable effort. I couldn't count up heads on the outside people,
but within our shop probably a half dozen people. It's no small
undertaking.

"Everything went pretty much according to plan," Specht continued.
"We had involvement of our three key race teams, so it was very much
a group effort and that is very gratifying. Even up to the
submission test that we did at Atlanta. We had the Wood Brothers
there with the car. We had Roush there with their engineering
support. We had Yates there with their driver, and Dale Jarrett got
in the car and drove it. I'm glad that when he got out of it he
said, 'It's great!'

"It was like that all along the process. The first few meetings were
with production guys representing the production side, and then we
had representatives from all our teams come in and talk about what
we were planning on doing. In that regard it's been very gratifying
that there's been no competition or backbiting amongst the teams.
The piece that we're ending up with is a very good race car and it
goes to show that two heads are better than one."

AutoRacing1 is an
independent internet online publication and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed
by CART Inc., NASCAR, FIA, Nextel, or any other series sponsor. This material may not be published,
broadcast, or redistributed without permission.User agreement
& disclaimer